Morrison Timing Screw Co.

Morrison Container Handling Solutions, Inc.

Mark Burk

Nick Lynn Wilson

James Higley

Lee Kuipers

Ryan Finke

John D Trawick

Christophe H Schilling

Armando Garza

Timothy J Dupin

Chris L J Wilson

Anthony Burgard

A system for forming horizontally stacked groups of containers includes an infeed screw set, an orienting screw set, and a grouping mechanism. Containers are presented to the infeed screw in a vertical orientation, and are progressed from the infeed screw set to the orienting screw set via a transitioning pocket defined by overlapping pockets of the infeed and orienting screw sets. As containers are progressed through the orienting screw the containers are rotated via a series of orienting pockets to a horizontal orientation and progressed via a series of nesting pockets to form a series of horizontally nested containers. The series is discharged to a grouping mechanism which separates a predefined number of containers from the series to form a horizontally stacked group, which is outfed from the stacking system.

Stacking system and method

A divider system for diverting objects from an infeed lane into one or more discharge lanes includes a dividing screw set, a discharge screw set, and a diverting mechanism. The dividing screw set conveys a sequence of objects to an output end of the screw set where the objects are divided by rotation of the dividing screw set and outputted alternately to first and second discharge screws of the discharge screw set to form a first series of objects conveyed by the first discharge screw and a second series of objects conveyed by the second discharge screw. The divider system includes a diverting mechanism which can be selectively actuated to divert objects from one discharge screw to the other discharge screw to form a diverted group.

Divider system

A packaging system and method forms a bundled group of articles in an oriented arrangement, by applying a wrapping material to the articles via the bottoms of the articles while the oriented arrangement of articles is inverted and retained by a pallet. The wrapping material may be a sleeve of shrinkable material applied to the inverted end of the articles and shrunk to conform to the articles and form a base enclosing the bottoms of the articles. The articles are retained by the pallet in the oriented arrangement during the inverting, sleeving and bundling of the group of articles, to provide a bundled group including the articles securely contained by the shrunk wrapping in the oriented arrangement. The bundled group may include more than one type of article. The pallet may be operable to retain a top portion of the article, which may have an irregular or asymmetrical shape.

Packaging system and method

A packaging system and method forms a bundled group of articles in an oriented arrangement, by applying a wrapping material to the articles via the bottoms of the articles while the oriented arrangement of articles is inverted and retained by a pallet. The wrapping material may be a sleeve of shrinkable material applied to the inverted end of the articles and shrunk to conform to the articles and form a base enclosing the bottoms of the articles. The articles are retained by the pallet in the oriented arrangement during the inverting, sleeving and bundling of the group of articles, to provide a bundled group including the articles securely contained by the shrunk wrapping in the oriented arrangement. The bundled group may include more than one type of article. The pallet may be configured to retain a top portion of the article, which may have an irregular or asymmetrical shape.

A rotary orienter includes a turret rotatable about a central axis and at least one rotation pad rotatably mounted to the turret and selectively rotatable about a pad axis. The turret rotates to index the rotation pad to a receiving station, a discharge station and at least one actuating station distributed radially about the central axis. The actuating station is intermediate the receiving station and discharge station. The rotation pad indexes from the receiving station in a locked condition such that rotation of the rotation pad is prevented, and is selectively unlocked by the actuating station such that the unlocked rotation pad rotates during indexing of the turret from the actuating station to the discharge station to reorient an object received onto the rotation pad at the receiving station in a received orientation to a predetermined orientation for discharge of the object in the predetermined orientation at the discharge station.

Rotary orienter

Packaging system

A gripper formed as a single component includes a hoop portion connecting facing arms. Each arm may have a tang end, a jaw end and a pivot intermediate the tang and jaw ends and be attached to the hoop portion at the pivot to be pivotable to change the size of a jaw opening defined by the jaw ends. The hoop portion is cyclically loaded in use and configured to act as a stress concentrator for the gripper and provide a failure point for consistently initiating a failure crack in the hoop portion at time of failure of the gripper. Each of the facing arms is attachable to a base such that at failure, the fractured portions of the gripper are retained to the base.

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Highland, IN, United States of America

Mark Burk